Hydrogen-bonding group containing materials capable of associating into polymer networks have attracted significant research attention and have been proposed as candidate materials for fiber coating applications due to their good solubility, coating properties and elasticity (Nair, K, P; Victor Breedveld, V.; Weck, M. Macromolecules 2008, 41, 3429-3438). Free radical polymerization of acrylic monomers initiated by AIBN serves as an excellent method for synthesis of such materials (Islamova, R. M., et al., Polymer Science 2006, 48(3); 130; Islamova, R. M., et al. Russian Journal of Applied Chemistry 2006). Radical polymerization is a fast and exothermic reaction which can quickly release large amounts of heat. Processing at a very large scale has to be slowed down due to the limited heat removal capacity of a batch reactor. A new device featuring miniaturization of the polymerization unit and greater heat transfer efficiency with no heat accumulation during polymerization is required. The microreactor technology is considered an attractive solution because microreactor has process miniaturization and micro heat exchanger (Watts, P.; Wiles, C. Chem. Commun., 2007, 443). Recently, polymerizations using microreactor technology have been investigated (Vandenbergh, J.; Junkers, T., Polymer Chemistry 2012, 3(10), 2739). However, up to now, such polymerization processes have been performed using tubular reactors without integral mixing. In 2005, the Yoshida group reported the preparation of poly(butyl acrylate) in a microreactor system which consisted of a T-shaped micromixer and tubular flow paths with a heat-conductive reactor (Iwasaki, T.; Yoshida, J., Macromolecules 2005, 38, 1159). It was found that material with a lower polydispersity index (PDI) of molecular weight than that produced in a batch reactor could be prepared. In this device, the microtube possessed good properties for heat exchange, but didn't play a role in mixing.
Polymerization of butyl acrylate and acrylamide was used as a model reaction to study polymerization in a microreactor. Our results demonstrated that a microfluidic process strategy with simultaneous micromixing and heat transfer for the scale-up of a free radical co-polymerization process is a promising method.